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India's Unsafe nuclear tests,still killing villagers

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Promises fail to impress villagers who remain parched for water, stricken by cancer.


This remote region in Rajasthan paints a clear picture of India’s contrasting reality. Basked in sun and sand, abject poverty, increasing incidences of cancer, shrinking grazing lands and an acute scarcity of water plagues villages around Pokhran, which once showcased to the world India’s strides in the nuclear arena. Today, candidates contesting the Pokhran seat for the December 1 Assembly election are battling voters’ indifference that they’ll actually resolve the multitude of day-to-day problems that villagers face here.

Chacha village, a few kilometres from Pokhran, greets you with the noise of wailing women and children; a detonation at the nuclear testing site nearby caused a tremor, which cracked the village’s water tank just a couple of hours earlier. “The water we had collected is gone,” says a sobbing Teja Ram, pointing at the receptacle which was thus far their source of water.

The water tank is a lifeline. Water is a prized, precious resource here. Habibullah knows this all too well. He had give away a tin of ghee to buy water, required for his wife’s delivery. “There was a tremor and all the water we had stored was gone,” Habibullah tellsdna. “Water is costlier than ghee, and I had to go to a nearby Bishnoi village to get water.”

Frequent tremors in the Thar desert due to the regular testing of missiles and other state-of-the-art armaments has been disrupting life in villages in the region. Water tanks and homes develop cracks and crumble at alarming frequency. The closest village from the testing site, Khetloi, is replete with crumbled concrete homes and hutments. “We received compensation after the 1998 tests. But that was too little, and some of the villages received no compensation,” says village head Banjaram. In the last assembly elections, BJP was humbled due to the issue of compensation.

Villages in the area around the testing site are also increasingly reporting fatalities due to cancer. “This village alone has reported 12 deaths over the past one year,” says Gomad village sarpanch Manzoor Meher. “And many more have been detected with this deadly disease.”

Little wonder then that the BJP’s candidate here, Shaitan Singh, is promising an oncology centre at the local hospital. Villagers take the promise with a pinch of salt. “We were promised relief and a cancer centre when five nuclear tests shook the desert here in May 1998. But everybody has forgotten us,” says Manzoor, who blames Shaitan Singh’s rival ad sitting Congress MLA Saleh Mohammad for being indifferent to the need of a special oncology centre.

The lone doctor at the Pokhran hospital, on condition of anonymity, admits that incidents of blood, skin and throat cancer have been increasing. The cattle too is frequently detected with body sores.
Whether the increasing incidences of cancer are linked to testing is not yet known and no scientific study has been undertaken to understand the the long-term effects of nuclear testing on health in the region. The doctor admits this is a matter for scientific scrutiny.

Sikandar, an electrician, who remembers the 1998 tests says they were evacuated from their houses early morning on the day of the tests. “We saw the desert turn white and the blasts hurled up a mound of earth. Doctors descended on our village for a few days and gave iodine tablets to everyone,” says Sikandar. “They advised us not to consume milk and water from open tanks and cisterns.”

Evacuations are all too common even today. Villagers in Khetloi and Odania say they are asked to evacuate at short notices to enable long-range missile tests. “On an average, villages are vacated twice a month and pushed to the forests,” says Meher Ali, an aide of the local MLA. “They are given Rs 50 per person in compensation.”

Disappointed Pokhran villagers hate promises | Latest News & Updates at Daily News & Analysis
 
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There is no such thing as a "safe" nuclear test. All countries take risks when conducting a nuclear test on the ground. US always tests off their mainland. If Pakistan has a secret of conducting safe nuclear test, please pass on to us :p:

BTW a year old article
 
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Shweta Desai | Courtesy: Scroll.in
Forty years after nuclear tests, frequent cancer deaths in Pokharan
Exactly four decades ago, India conducted its first nuclear test in Pokhran. Though villagers have complained that they are suffering from diseases linked to radiation exposure, the authorities say their claims have no scientific basis.
The next morning, India tested its first nuclear device, exploding an eight-kiloton thermonuclear device in the Pokhran firing range in the Jaisalmer desert, five km from Loharki village. “No one was sure if the explosion would be successful or if the wind would carry harmful radiation and affect us,” Rawlot told Scroll.in. “The villages around the explosion site were counted in the list of ‘martyrs’ as any damage including human health was expected to be like collateral damage in view of the larger good.”

Forty years after India’s Smiling Buddha mission, the villages in the vicinity of the Pokhran test range have long fallen out of the international spotlight. But in the decades since, as they have been beset by what they claim are abnormally high rates of cancer and genetic disorders, these villagers have joined a tragic global circle of residents of nuclear test sites around the world who grapple every day with the fear of radiation exposure.

Among them is Krishna Ram, a 30-year-old labourer from Loharki, who said that his father Kanha Ram died around five years ago of a cancer that caused him to develop a lump on his throat. “It is because of the radiation which took place here,’’ Ram said, pointing to the sand dunes that were formed by the 1974 explosion. “There were no previous cases of cancer or skin irritation in this village. It only started after these explosions.” In May 1998, India conducted a second nuclear explosion in Pokhran.

Crops turn white

Shortly after the first explosion, crops in Loharki and Khetolai, the villages closest to the site, began to turn white. Six months later, villagers started to complain of skin irritation, a burning sensation in eyes and nose and eventually of cancer, genetic disorders and skin diseases in humans and cattle.

Instances of cancer are still commonplace. For instance, Om Prakash and his wife Tulsi Vishnoi lost their 18-year-old daughter, Manisha, in August 2013. The high-school student initially complained of a stinging pain in her ears and was soon struck with partial paralysis of her face. “The doctors told us she had cancer,” said her mother. “By August 20, she left us.” Vishnoi is now collecting medical records and seeking the help of lawyers and the doctors who treated Manisha to investigate whether nuclear radiation was indeed the cause for her death.

“I had a healthy daughter with no previous medical history,” said Om Prakash. “If her cancer was caused due to the nuclear explosions here, I want the government to be accountable for it.”

Another villager, Ramrakh Bishnoi, also blamed his son’s death on the nuclear explosion. Sarvan Bishnoi was born in 2000, two years after five nuclear tests were conducted just 4 km away in Khetolai. “He didn’t have polio,” said his father. “We had vaccinated him, so we couldn’t understand why he was unable to walk at first. We went to the doctor but it did not help him.” Sarvan died in 2008.

Bishnoi is illiterate and has no medical records to establish the exactly cause of his son’s death. But Sarvan’s symptoms seemed very similar to the conditions described by a group of people from Nagasaki and Hiroshima who visited Khetolai in 1998. “They came here and cried when they told us what happened to their families after the nuclear bomb was dropped in their country,” Bishnoi said. “The effects of radiation are very dangerous and we live so close to the site, it is only obvious that all the diseases and deaths in the village are a result of this.”

Over the last four decades, the government has done little to wipe away the villagers’ fears.

Studies at nuclear tests sites around the world indicate rising incidence of cancer as one of the major health impacts. This led Dr Arjun Singh, a former Joint Director of Medical and Health Services in the Jodhpur region, who is also a resident of Loharki village, to carry out a preliminary medical survey in 2009 in the villages within a 10-km radius range of the explosion site. He and a team of doctors spent more than six months on the study.

“There is a definite rise in cancer, genetic abnormality amongst livestock and skin problems in the villages of inner radius from the test site,” said Dr Singh. At the time of the survey, Loharki had around 17 deaths from cancer and Khetolai, 20 deaths.

However, the results of his survey are unpublished due to lack of radiation exposure studies on Pokhran’s water and air, in addition to its human and cattle population. Dr Singh’s medical survey can only be corroborated after such studies are undertaken in Pokhran and the results compared with data in other districts of Jaisalmer that are not exposed to nuclear explosion.

Groundwater contamination

Decades after the tests, experts believe that groundwater in Loharki and other villages could still be contaminated. Robert Jacobs, an associate professor at the Hiroshima Peace Institute, Hiroshima City University, who has studied several nuclear test sites, said that the presence of alpha emitting particles which are widespread at areas around all nuclear test sites remains a serious concern.

“These are a wide variety of particles, some radioactive like plutonium, and some made radioactive by the nuclear blast,” said Jacobs. “In an underground test like Pokhran, a great deal of alpha emitting particles remain in the shafts were the weapons were detonated. Many of these may enter into ground water or be taken up by plants as the shaft decays.”

These particles are hard to detect with a Geiger counter, he said. While the particles cannot penetrate the skin, they can lodge themselves in the body and, over several years, are likely to cause cancers.

The Pokhran range area is approximately 926 km, situated 25 feet to 101 feet below ground level. There is a large sweet water reservoir to the north, approximately 12 km from the Pokhran range, which has water levels at 100 feet to 300 feet below ground level.

“After the explosion in 1974, around 25 rain water tanks and two wells in the village were all damaged and broken,” said Kishan Singh whose own tank in Loharki was damaged. “Some people came and warned us to not drink the water in the beginning as it could be contaminated.’’

Jacobs said that sicknesses recorded around test sites could be caused by many factors other than radiation. “When the sickness is from the widespread dispersal of alpha emitters, it is almost impossible to say they were caused by exposures to radiation,” he said. “The only way that is done is by doing very long term statistical comparisons with similar populations in areas away from nuclear test sites, and so this can take 50 years or more.’’

Jacobs has noted a typically rises in thyroid cancer, stomach and bowel cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, leukemia and also many types of immune system disorders, occurring in the communities living around nuclear test sites including the ones in Marshal Islands, site of the largest nuclear weapons ever tested by the United States.

Epidemiological test

But in the absence of an epidemiological study in Pokhran – a study of patterns, causes, and effects of health and disease conditions in defined populations over a period of time – it is difficult to establish whether radiation exposure is the cause of cancer in these villages, said MV Ramanna, a physicist at the Princeton University’s Nuclear Futures Laboratory and Program on Science and Global Security, who himself has described numerous examples of the health impact of nuclear activity in his books.

“We cannot just look at an individual cancer victim and determine it is due to radiation,” he said, pointing out that cancers also occur due to natural causes and through exposure to carcinogens. “The Department of Atomic Energy has the necessary technical infrastructure to do the radioactive pathway analysis and there is a need to undertake this study.’’

At present, the DAE measures radiation level around the Pokhran test site twice in a year. It claims that the levels have been normal since the 1974 explosion, so it has never studied the risk of health fallout in Pokhran. “In all these years, the radiation levels have been normal in the background of the test site,” said SK Malhotra, the head of the department’s Public Awareness Division.

He added, “We have not found radiation level to be increased or at risk, so how can there be co-relation with the number of cancer cases.”




When an army battalion moved into the school in Loharki, on the night of May 17, 1974, the soldiers informed the 2,000 residents of the village in Rajasthan that “air firing” the next day could “cause eye and nose irritation” but that things would “normalise thereafter”, recalled Gulab Singh Rawlot, who was then the chief patron of the 24 village panchayats of Pokhran town.

Forty years after nuclear tests, frequent cancer deaths in Pokharan | DiaNuke.org

All Praise Pakistani Scientists,who conducted 100% safe nuclear tests

All Praise Pakistani Scientists,who conducted 100% safe nuclear tests
 
. . .
The radiation effects of nuclear tests in Balochistan:

The Baloch people of surrounding areas still suffer worst and drought engulfed Balochistan soon after the nuclear explosion also; Radioactivity, leukemia, cancer and numerous genital diseases have been reported from the different surrounding regions.

The people of Chaghi migrated to other parts of Balochistan. A large number of children including women got handicapped. The radiation of nuclear tests still exists in the area and impacting horribly to ecology. The new born babies including women are also suffering from adverse effect of mentioned tests.

Since the dirty nuclear blasts Baloch have been observing 28th May as black day, and condemning the rulers for selecting the Baloch land as their nuclear test venue. Each year this day Baloch protester demand to international community and United Nation to determine the radiation of these explosions in Balochistan.

Pakistan nuclear test in Balochistan and its fatal repercussions | Monthly Bolan Voice
 
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All Praise Pakistani Scientists,who conducted 100% safe nuclear tests

Yes Yes So safe that the people of Chaghi migrated to other parts of Balochistan as leukemia, cancer and numerous genital diseases were being commonly reported there! :coffee:

Pakistan nuclear test in Balochistan and its fatal repercussions
Jun 21

Posted by bolanvoice

By Hanif Baloch

Enrico Fermi is considered a major figure in the discovery of nuclear energy. This physicist was born in Rome, Italy, was the first scientist to split the atom and his research later led to nuclear power generation. Together with Leo Szilard, Fermi discovered the first nuclear reactor that caused nuclear chain reactions.

It was in 1934 when Fermi achieved success in his beta ray emission theory in radioactivity. He then pursued further study to determine the creation of artificially radioactive isotopes through the bombardment of neutron. His research on the bombardment of uranium with slow neutrons is now what we call atomic fission. This led Fermi to continue his research together with Leo Szilard. Together, they worked on building an atomic pile which could produce a controlled release of nuclear energy initially at Columbia and later on at the University of Chicago. They completed this project in 1942.

Following the same mentioned technology state of Pakistan in 1972 commenced establishing nuclear technology and after few decades this state on 28th May, 1998, tested its nuclear bombs in mountain Koh Kambar Raskoh hills of Chaghi in North West Balochistan. For many people this day has been celebrating as Yum-e-Takbeer, (the greatness day) a pride for them but for Baloch Nation this day is mourn. That day was not a great day for Baloch Nation, but they are calling their self as an Islamic atomic power. After testing nuclear explosion the engineers and scientist paid a postrait nuclear and thanked Allah that they got nuclear power.

At that time in Balochistan the BNP (Balochistan National Party-Mengal) was ruling. The mentioned party head Akhtar Mengal was the chief minister of Balochistan and at the arrival of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif the CM of province Mr Mengal himself drove the vehicle from airport to governor house Quetta. Recently, Mr Nawaz Sharif during the visit of Quetta spoke-out that Akhtar Mengal was chanting slogan “Pakistan Zindabad”, “Long live Pakistan” with full-throat after successive nuclear blasts at the site in Raskoh Chaghi. But discussed party says that they were unaware about nuclear explosion schedule and made coalition with same that deceptive Punjab’s leaders. The said party also has taken part in parliamentary process and keeping silence about these testes and devastations in Balochistan.

They showed the world that no one can point out to Pakistan’s sovereignty. Being on seventh ranked in series of atomic power procuring countries the masses of Baloch are below the poverty line and they are living in the stone-age. The people value to sheep, they use their hairs and fabricate tents for shelter. Chaghi is deprived of basic rights, in which the provision of education and water shortage are the most noticeable.

The 30 kilo meter ranging grayish mountainous area of Chaghi after nuclear tests got changed in color yellow and white due to radiation of 30 tons of nuclear materials bombardment with five blasts in Chaghi, meanwhile two in the Kharan Mountains.

The poet Mansoor Baloch in his poetry said, “In the back drop of Balochistan’s occupation everything is weeping, invading the deep impassable sees, which is filled with blood tears”.

The radiation effects of nuclear tests in Balochistan:

The Baloch people of surrounding areas still suffer worst and drought engulfed Balochistan soon after the nuclear explosion also; Radioactivity, leukemia, cancer and numerous genital diseases have been reported from the different surrounding regions.

The people of Chaghi migrated to other parts of Balochistan. A large number of children including women got handicapped. The radiation of nuclear tests still exists in the area and impacting horribly to ecology. The new born babies including women are also suffering from adverse effect of mentioned tests.

Since the dirty nuclear blasts Baloch have been observing 28th May as black day, and condemning the rulers for selecting the Baloch land as their nuclear test venue. Each year this day Baloch protester demand to international community and United Nation to determine the radiation of these explosions in Balochistan.

Pakistan nuclear test in Balochistan and its fatal repercussions | Monthly Bolan Voice

“We need someone to take a water sample and analyze it abroad. No laboratory in Pakistan dares to do so for fear of reprisals. I myself do not dare to give my real name because, quite possibly, the ISI (Pakistani intelligence) would kill me by the time this interview was published.”

- a local physician's testimony; Interviewed by Karlos Zurutuza in Summer 2009

Nuclear testing in Balochistan: a local physician's testimony, by Karlos Zurutuza
 
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If its true(which i doubt) then Govt. needs to relocate these villagers to some other place where they need not to fear about all these so called problems.:coffee:
 
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Pokhran tests were done in Flat desert where ground is lose sand. thats why the radiation escaped into the air.
Pakistan's tests were done deep inside a solid rock mountain,and tunnels were zig zag. thats why no radiation escaped.

Pokhran test had no mountains to soak up the tremors.
Pakistan's Chagi tests, all vibration was soaked up by mountains.

Pokhran test was only 4 km away from a sizeable population,and that too without any barriers or mountains in between.
Pakistan's chaghi has many mountains to act as shield between population and Test site.

So there are the differences,and reasons why Pakistan Conducted a safe test. India just nuked its own poor villagers.

From Wiki
The device was detonated at 8.05 a.m. in a shaft 107 m under the army Pokhran test range
Pokhran - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


hat was a very shallow detonation in a sandy ground. Radiation was set to escape.
 
Last edited:
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Shweta Desai | Courtesy: Scroll.in
Forty years after nuclear tests, frequent cancer deaths in Pokharan
Exactly four decades ago, India conducted its first nuclear test in Pokhran. Though villagers have complained that they are suffering from diseases linked to radiation exposure, the authorities say their claims have no scientific basis.
The next morning, India tested its first nuclear device, exploding an eight-kiloton thermonuclear device in the Pokhran firing range in the Jaisalmer desert, five km from Loharki village. “No one was sure if the explosion would be successful or if the wind would carry harmful radiation and affect us,” Rawlot told Scroll.in. “The villages around the explosion site were counted in the list of ‘martyrs’ as any damage including human health was expected to be like collateral damage in view of the larger good.”

Forty years after India’s Smiling Buddha mission, the villages in the vicinity of the Pokhran test range have long fallen out of the international spotlight. But in the decades since, as they have been beset by what they claim are abnormally high rates of cancer and genetic disorders, these villagers have joined a tragic global circle of residents of nuclear test sites around the world who grapple every day with the fear of radiation exposure.

Among them is Krishna Ram, a 30-year-old labourer from Loharki, who said that his father Kanha Ram died around five years ago of a cancer that caused him to develop a lump on his throat. “It is because of the radiation which took place here,’’ Ram said, pointing to the sand dunes that were formed by the 1974 explosion. “There were no previous cases of cancer or skin irritation in this village. It only started after these explosions.” In May 1998, India conducted a second nuclear explosion in Pokhran.

Crops turn white

Shortly after the first explosion, crops in Loharki and Khetolai, the villages closest to the site, began to turn white. Six months later, villagers started to complain of skin irritation, a burning sensation in eyes and nose and eventually of cancer, genetic disorders and skin diseases in humans and cattle.

Instances of cancer are still commonplace. For instance, Om Prakash and his wife Tulsi Vishnoi lost their 18-year-old daughter, Manisha, in August 2013. The high-school student initially complained of a stinging pain in her ears and was soon struck with partial paralysis of her face. “The doctors told us she had cancer,” said her mother. “By August 20, she left us.” Vishnoi is now collecting medical records and seeking the help of lawyers and the doctors who treated Manisha to investigate whether nuclear radiation was indeed the cause for her death.

“I had a healthy daughter with no previous medical history,” said Om Prakash. “If her cancer was caused due to the nuclear explosions here, I want the government to be accountable for it.”

Another villager, Ramrakh Bishnoi, also blamed his son’s death on the nuclear explosion. Sarvan Bishnoi was born in 2000, two years after five nuclear tests were conducted just 4 km away in Khetolai. “He didn’t have polio,” said his father. “We had vaccinated him, so we couldn’t understand why he was unable to walk at first. We went to the doctor but it did not help him.” Sarvan died in 2008.

Bishnoi is illiterate and has no medical records to establish the exactly cause of his son’s death. But Sarvan’s symptoms seemed very similar to the conditions described by a group of people from Nagasaki and Hiroshima who visited Khetolai in 1998. “They came here and cried when they told us what happened to their families after the nuclear bomb was dropped in their country,” Bishnoi said. “The effects of radiation are very dangerous and we live so close to the site, it is only obvious that all the diseases and deaths in the village are a result of this.”

Over the last four decades, the government has done little to wipe away the villagers’ fears.

Studies at nuclear tests sites around the world indicate rising incidence of cancer as one of the major health impacts. This led Dr Arjun Singh, a former Joint Director of Medical and Health Services in the Jodhpur region, who is also a resident of Loharki village, to carry out a preliminary medical survey in 2009 in the villages within a 10-km radius range of the explosion site. He and a team of doctors spent more than six months on the study.

“There is a definite rise in cancer, genetic abnormality amongst livestock and skin problems in the villages of inner radius from the test site,” said Dr Singh. At the time of the survey, Loharki had around 17 deaths from cancer and Khetolai, 20 deaths.

However, the results of his survey are unpublished due to lack of radiation exposure studies on Pokhran’s water and air, in addition to its human and cattle population. Dr Singh’s medical survey can only be corroborated after such studies are undertaken in Pokhran and the results compared with data in other districts of Jaisalmer that are not exposed to nuclear explosion.

Groundwater contamination

Decades after the tests, experts believe that groundwater in Loharki and other villages could still be contaminated. Robert Jacobs, an associate professor at the Hiroshima Peace Institute, Hiroshima City University, who has studied several nuclear test sites, said that the presence of alpha emitting particles which are widespread at areas around all nuclear test sites remains a serious concern.

“These are a wide variety of particles, some radioactive like plutonium, and some made radioactive by the nuclear blast,” said Jacobs. “In an underground test like Pokhran, a great deal of alpha emitting particles remain in the shafts were the weapons were detonated. Many of these may enter into ground water or be taken up by plants as the shaft decays.”

These particles are hard to detect with a Geiger counter, he said. While the particles cannot penetrate the skin, they can lodge themselves in the body and, over several years, are likely to cause cancers.

The Pokhran range area is approximately 926 km, situated 25 feet to 101 feet below ground level. There is a large sweet water reservoir to the north, approximately 12 km from the Pokhran range, which has water levels at 100 feet to 300 feet below ground level.

“After the explosion in 1974, around 25 rain water tanks and two wells in the village were all damaged and broken,” said Kishan Singh whose own tank in Loharki was damaged. “Some people came and warned us to not drink the water in the beginning as it could be contaminated.’’

Jacobs said that sicknesses recorded around test sites could be caused by many factors other than radiation. “When the sickness is from the widespread dispersal of alpha emitters, it is almost impossible to say they were caused by exposures to radiation,” he said. “The only way that is done is by doing very long term statistical comparisons with similar populations in areas away from nuclear test sites, and so this can take 50 years or more.’’

Jacobs has noted a typically rises in thyroid cancer, stomach and bowel cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, leukemia and also many types of immune system disorders, occurring in the communities living around nuclear test sites including the ones in Marshal Islands, site of the largest nuclear weapons ever tested by the United States.

Epidemiological test

But in the absence of an epidemiological study in Pokhran – a study of patterns, causes, and effects of health and disease conditions in defined populations over a period of time – it is difficult to establish whether radiation exposure is the cause of cancer in these villages, said MV Ramanna, a physicist at the Princeton University’s Nuclear Futures Laboratory and Program on Science and Global Security, who himself has described numerous examples of the health impact of nuclear activity in his books.

“We cannot just look at an individual cancer victim and determine it is due to radiation,” he said, pointing out that cancers also occur due to natural causes and through exposure to carcinogens. “The Department of Atomic Energy has the necessary technical infrastructure to do the radioactive pathway analysis and there is a need to undertake this study.’’

At present, the DAE measures radiation level around the Pokhran test site twice in a year. It claims that the levels have been normal since the 1974 explosion, so it has never studied the risk of health fallout in Pokhran. “In all these years, the radiation levels have been normal in the background of the test site,” said SK Malhotra, the head of the department’s Public Awareness Division.

He added, “We have not found radiation level to be increased or at risk, so how can there be co-relation with the number of cancer cases.”




When an army battalion moved into the school in Loharki, on the night of May 17, 1974, the soldiers informed the 2,000 residents of the village in Rajasthan that “air firing” the next day could “cause eye and nose irritation” but that things would “normalise thereafter”, recalled Gulab Singh Rawlot, who was then the chief patron of the 24 village panchayats of Pokhran town.

Forty years after nuclear tests, frequent cancer deaths in Pokharan | DiaNuke.org

All Praise Pakistani Scientists,who conducted 100% safe nuclear tests

All Praise Pakistani Scientists,who conducted 100% safe nuclear tests

So you are comparing 70s test to your recent test & Pakistani nuclear program is very secretive how do we know that there have been no deaths there
 
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